Diamonds of War: Africa’s Blood Diamonds

In this movie, NatGeo follows the trail of the diamonds from Sierra Leone to the diamond markets of Belgium and provides and in-depth look at how African conflict diamonds make their way into and get long amongst the certified diamond market. The journalists in this film took on a great deal of risk to secretly film many parts of this movie. The most significant takeaway from this one was the question of how a simple pebble could have so many meanings: love, affection, power, greed, violence, etc.

Stress: Portrait of a Killer

This one is a very detailed look at how stress affects the human body. The scientists in this film examine the responses that various animals have to stress and compare them to that of humans. It also looks into the negative physiological outcomes of excessive stress. The profound takeaway from this one was the fact that humans are the only animal on the planet that can produce stress from a mere thought. For every other animal, stress is strictly reserved for physical strains such as physical pain and “fight or flight”, adrenaline-driven responses.

Inside North Korea

By claiming that they are going to film an eye surgeon performing pro-bono lens replacements for cataract patients (which they do), the makers of this film get both a raw, uncensored look into North Korea and its brainwashing machine and the idealistic, censored version that Kim Jong Il meticulously projects to the rest of the world. The main takeaway from this film was the idea that there is no real difference between being a true believer in something and fear that same thing. The North Korean dictatorship makes die-hard believers out of their starving nation by striking fear into their hearts to keep them subordinate.

So far, there hasn’t been a single place that provides wifi connectivity that I haven’t been able to connect to, a problem that I had quite often with my Vaio notebook. This is something that’s pretty vital for a person with a mobile lifestyle. Also, I inserted my SIM card from my AT&T USB Connect into my netbook and it began working immediately, allowing me internet connectivity anywhere within AT&T’s data network (up to 3G speeds).

I don’t do anything too crazy on my netbook, and I haven’t tried anything very graphic- or memory-intesive, but its great for what I have done thus far. I use OpenOffice.org, a free, open-source office suit of programs that are fully compatible with those of Microsoft Office. I chose this route because I heard ravings about its quick load time, thus assuming that it would run pretty cleanly on my netbook (which it does, with flying colors).  The best part is that it also includes the ability to export documents in PDF format. I use CCleaner to keep it mal-ware free, Firefox mobile for my browsing, Defraggler for effective defragmenting, and Foxit Reader for opening PDFs. The best part about all of these programs is that they are all FREE! After a little tweaking and fiddling, my netbook also smoothly runs my favorite game of all time, Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings with the Conquerors Expansion.